Philia
by Sweet Honey-sempai
Summary: A look into the two of the most underrated pairings in YnM: Saya and Yuma, and Tsubaki and Eileen.
1. Elenchophilia

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yami no Matsuei

**Side Note #1:** Something that I haven't been able to get out of my head, and something to work on when I'm not busy with Southeast of Eden. Couples are in no particular order and are discussed as they come to me.

**Side Note #2:** "Elencho" is the Greek word for "control". I've concluded that "Elenchophilia" is basically one who desires control. If you can correct my medical terminology, please do.

**Preface:**

_"Tired lovers, rest your heads  
Here upon the pillows sweet  
One for your brow, one for your feet,  
And on this humble food be fed;_

_And then drink you of the holy wine."  
So spoke the voice of the dead.  
They dreamed of what was left unsaid;  
They mourned the hollow loss of time;_

_And finally the two were wise,  
And finally were lifted up,  
And tasted joy, drank its cup  
And drained the dregs of paradise._

- Unknown

* * *

Elenchophilia

* * *

Fukiya Yuma had a penchant for being in control. As a child she had her widowed father, too mournful for his wife and too devoted to his daughter to even think of remarrying, wrapped around her finger. She lived as the woman of the house. She ordered the living room, set up the bathroom just so, and what she cooked, her father ate, whether it was burned or not. He adored her, and she could coax him into doing anything she wanted. 

School was much the same. Her teachers described her as "spoiled but not selfish" in her interactions with the other children. She expected the best of toys, pencils, seats, what have you, but more often than not she gave them to one of her friends while she took the second best of whatever it was. There was a certain incorrigible pushiness about her that defied argument.

Her love life was no different. Unafraid of repercussions, she pursued her natural inclination to keep female company throughout her teen years. Her adoring father was the only man in her life.

Torii Saya couldn't be called a girlfriend, as she wasn't. Her heart belonged to another. But she could be called a best friend. In fact, the "best" of what Yuma demanded and received form her peers was most often handed directly over to Saya. And she could be called easily controlled.

Yuma's rival in middle school once called her on it, saying she didn't have a best friend so much as a pet puppy. Yuma, of course, found this laughably absurd. It wasn't that Saya was brainless, it was just that she was so easy. Easy to understand. Easy to make smile, easy to make laugh, easy to convince that whatever scheme Yuma dreamed up was plausible and a good idea. Easy to make upset, and just as easy to cheer up. Saya was something Yuma understood.

So it came as quite a shock to Yuma when Saya disappeared one day. They were in the beginning of their first year of High School and Yuma had never known Saya to skip before. After returning home to grumble about it to her father, she stomped upstairs and dialed Saya's number.

"Hello?"

Yuma blinked at the somewhat desperate tone of Saya's voice. "Hey, it's me, Yuma."

"Yuma! Hey!"

"You sound affected, angel-wings. Why weren't you in school?"

"Oh, I didn't feel well."

"Why, what's wrong?"

"Shinichi dumped me."

"Good," Yuma said. "I never liked him. He was rude and uncivilized and he didn't even look good in a dress."

"I love him."

"No you don't, Saya. You're 15."

"Yes I do, Yuma. You're 15, too."

Yuma briefly wondered why that statement had any relevance. The crush on Saya she had nursed since Middle School had been kept a complete secret from the girl, Yuma had made sure of that. It was her personal policy never to encroach upon someone who was already spoken for, even if it was an impossibly effeminate man who was just begging to be dressed in drag, or an impossibly adorable best friend she had grown up with.

"Why'd he break up with you?" Yuma asked, quickly recovering.

"He said that I was…spending too much time with you."

"What, did he call you a dyke?" Yuma took Saya's silence for an affirmation. "Well, he was a stupid -sshole, anyway."

"Don't say that."

"Why shouldn't I? He called me a dyke, too."

"Yuma, _please_…"

"Ugh, Saya, you're too nice," Yuma teased with a roll of her eyes. She briefly considered telling Saya about her feelings for her, but decided that it was way too soon for the sensitive girl.

The next day Yuma called Saya again, asking her to come over.

"No, thanks."

That annoyed Yuma. Saya usually jumped at the offer to stay over like a dog jumped on a bone. After hanging up the phone, Yuma marched downstairs, tugged on her coat, and stormed off to Saya's house. Saya's parents, knowing her reputation, were reluctant to let Yuma stay in the house, so Yuma went directly to Saya's bedroom window and smacked her fist against it until Saya pulled open her blinds and then the actual window. Yuma blinked, taken aback at the red of Saya's cheek.

"What happened to your face?" she asked, pointing.

"I talked to him today."

"And he _hit_ you?" Yuma asked, her own face red, but with angered blood. She had half a mind—scratch that, a full mind to go and flush his head down a toilet.

"Don't do anything, Yuma," Saya importuned.

"You are absolutely nuts, Saya! He _hit_ you! You should strangle him!"

"You shouldn't get in trouble because of me."

Yuma tried in vain to convince Saya to consent to a revenge trip, eventually storming home. Well, she left on civil terms with Saya—she could never bring herself to get mad at the girl, no matter how wishy-washy she could be sometimes, but she did her fair share of foot-stomping on the way home.

"Yuma-_chan_," her father said when she relayed this to him. "There are just some things you can't control."

And he would look at her with those sad eyes and she wound falter under them, before ordering him to stop, the hospital wasn't necessary, and where was her medication?

And he gave it to her, saying she looked so much like her mother and how could the universe be so cruel as to try and take his little girl away the same way they took her mother?

And Yuma told him to stop worrying; a little pneumonia was nothing to fret over. She wouldn't leave him like Mother left. She knew it. She promised it.

A few days later Saya's mother called. Knowing that the Torii family was wary of her "gayness" as Saya's little brother had termed it, Yuma had an awful feeling in her stomach. Saya was well-beloved of her family, and they would call her closest friend if something serious had happened.

"She's not eating," Saya's mother told her, and those 3 words kept ricocheting across Yuma's mind as she again ventured to the Torii household. This time, Saya met her on the porch.

"I'm just not hungry," Saya said, smiling weakly at Yuma.

"Did you talk to Shinichi again?" Yuma demanded.

"Yes."

"And let me guess, he said you were a disgusting lesbian again?"

"That's not the reason he broke up with me."

"Then what is?"

"Because I'm sad and tired all the time."

Yuma scowled, and then smiled. "Of course, and he notices that you're only happy when _I'm_ around. No wonder he thinks you're mine."

Saya smiled weakly.

"We're going to send her to a doctor," Saya's mother informed Yuma when she called Saya back into the house. "It's not right for her to be like this."

Yuma went home and took her medication.

So Saya disappeared for a few days, and Yuma waited and worried and coughed for a few days. Her worry was getting to her. She felt feverish. Her head hurt. Her neck hurt. Sunlight bothered her. Where was her medication?

Saya's family called the Fukiya household again. "They diagnosed her with depression," was her mother's tearful message. "Saya said she's been feeling sad for a long time. They said that breaking up with Shinichi only agitated it. They're leaving her at the hospital for observation. And she still won't eat."

Yuma promised to visit the afflicted girl right away. But when the phone was nestled safely back in its cradle her throat closed up. To cough was painful and she crumpled, emptying her stomach on the tiles of the floor, waiting and hacking for what seemed like hours for her father to come into the room and then rush her to the hospital.

"Fukiya-_san_, the antibiotics assigned to her haven't been powerful enough. She's developed Streptococcus pneumoniae."

"You can just up the antibiotics, can't you?" Yuma demanded from the bed, not content with being talked about.

"There's more to it, Yuma-_san_," her doctor said, addressing her. "Because of that, your body has been overdeveloping cytokines into a cytokine storm."

"What does that entail?" Yuma's father asked.

"It means that she's developed sepsis. It means that her heart, liver, and kidney are now at risk, as well."

"Oh, no…"

"Fukiya-_san_, she's also developed meningitis due to the Streptococcus. We can prescribe the proper antibiotics and chemotherapy, and she needs to stay in the ICU. Fukiya-_san_…she's dying."

Yuma hated every moment in the hospital. Not just the chemotherapy, not just when her IV bag was refilled, not just when she forced down pills with increasing difficulty. When her father came in and looked at her with haunted eyes, and when he prayed for the spirit of her mother to be her guide in death. When she thought about Saya, under treatment in some other part of the hospital, losing weight and interest in life.

It tore at her that she couldn't get up and go to Saya and force food down her throat. She began penning a letter to Saya, telling her to start eating and come visit her and please get well. Saya would get it before Yuma died.

"It's such a shame," a nurse said, outside Yuma's open door. "That poor Torii girl."

"It's always sad when the young ones give up. She was just starting to make a recovery."

"What halted the progress?"

"Apparently she heard the doctors discussing a friend of hers who's here. Down with streptococcus and meningitis."

"That's lethal!"

"If her friend was going to die, she didn't want to stay alive."

"You can't buy loyalty like that."

Yuma looked at the piece of paper she had just scratched the last four words of her letter on.

_PS I love you._

After that Yuma's condition grew worse.

"Now, don't cry, Daddy," Yuma said one night two weeks after news of Saya's death. "I'm going to be all right."

"My little girl…my baby girl…"

"You are going to find another wife and have dozens of little girls," Yuma said. "I absolutely forbid you to do otherwise."

Yuma drew a ragged breath and her father burst into tears.

"Stop it. Stop crying, Daddy!"

Her IV was taken down and her father sobbed brokenly.

Yuma liked Meifu. It was pretty and pink, two of her favorite non-sentient things. The weather was nice and so were the people, especially Tsuzuki. When she had first arrived he had offered to show her around and get her acquainted with the afterworld.

She confided in Tsuzuki that she wasn't used to being the one led around, and she did not like it. She had died from something out of her control and that bothered her.

"A controlled death isn't any more pleasant," Tsuzuki had informed her. Yuma noticed that he was sad when he told her this and she immediately produced enough change to let him go buy a muffin. His face lit up at the thought of food and Yuma was reminded of Saya, so easy to make happy before her depression and the breakup with Shinichi.

"Tsuzuki, do you know of anyone in Meifu named Torii Saya?"

And then Yuma was in Hokkaido, outside a small cottage, and knocking on the door with a confident smile on her face. Saya opened the door slowly.

"Yuma?"

"That's me."

"I knew you were in love with me," Saya told her once, some weeks after Yuma had been assigned to be her partner.

This shocked Yuma. "But...I made sure you never knew!"

"You can't control my intuition, darling."

"Why did you never say anything?"

"I didn't want you to be sadded with a girlfriend suffering from depression. Not when you were ill."

"You knew I was sick?"

"Like I said, you can't control my intuition, Yuma."

"And...and you loved me, too?"

"Yes, I did."

Yuma leaned over and kissed Saya. And Yuma saw with satisfaction that she could still make Saya smile.


	2. Symbolophilia

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Yami no Matsuei

**Side Note #1:** As silly as it sounds, "Symbolophilia" is the love of symbols. I don't make up Greek words. I just combine them for my nefarious fanfiction purposes.

Side Note #2:"-_dono_" is an old honorific not in use anymore, but it basically means "My Lord" or "My Lady", a step down from "-_sama_".

* * *

Symbolophilia

* * *

Eileen liked symbolism. She read a lot—rather too much for an eight-year-old—and she went positively gleeful when she could point out that the eclipse meant a great change, or that the sun meant happiness, or that the doves flying away meant an ending. Her love of symbolism also led her to Tarot, which in turn led her into playing cards, which had no symbolism but were the descendants of Tarot, so that meant something. And besides, they were fun.

She also liked nicknames, which was how she came to call Tsubaki "Camille-_dono_". She liked the Japanese system of honorifics, and upon learning that there was a book character named Camille who had the word "Lady" attached to her name, "Camille-_dono_" Tsubaki became.

She combined her love of nicknames and symbolism one day, after she had taught Tsubaki all the meanings of the tarot cards and they had played Go Fish for forty-five minutes. Tsubaki was stuck inside, as the damp day would be bad for her lungs, which would in turn be bad for her heart, and both girls were fantastically bored.

"Hey, what does your name mean?" Tsubaki asked suddenly.

"I dunno," Eileen returned. "Let's go look it up."

Tsubaki's father had kept as a keepsake the name book his wife had gotten Tsubaki's name from. Some of the names were in English, but Eileen had grown up bilingual seeing as she had been born when Hong Kong was still a British colony, and she could read them.

Looking up "Eileen" led them to looking up "Helen", the stem from which her name blossomed. It was Greek and it meant "Light".

"Hey, let's look up "Camille"!" Eileen suggested, and they eagerly flipped to the "C" section of Girls' names. It was Latin, and it meant "Pure".

The next day Eileen dropped a white Lily wrapped in blue Baby's Breath on Tsubaki's windowsill, instead of the usual red Camellia.

"I couldn't find anything that meant "light"," she informed Tsubaki, "but my mother says that these mean "purity".

Tsubaki and Eileen eagerly raided the kitchen for a vase that Tsubaki gleefully stuck the Lily and Baby's Breath in, which she then planted on her bedroom windowsill.

Tsubaki cried when the flowers withered a week later, and Eileen, eager to stop her friend from crying, snuck the young debutante out to the bazaar where Eileen's family sold flowers. She first went to a small bookshop and picked out a diary.

"My mother says when the flowers die, you can pick off the leaves and stick them in this book so they smell pretty forever!" Eileen explained, handing over all the pocket change she had amassed in two years to pay for the blank book.

She then grabbed Tsubaki's hand and dragged her to the family flower stall, and presented her with a Lily of the Valley. "Mother says that this means "return of happiness", so you can stop crying now!"

Tsubaki grinned, buried her nose in the Lily of the Valley, and then planted a dainty kiss on Eileen's cheek.

In two years' time Tsubaki was being seen by Muraki-_sensei_ and this was greatly aggravating to Eileen. Not only was Tsubaki was missing out on half their playtime together, she was coming back red-faced and giggling and smiling.

"I heard Kakyoin-_san_ say Muraki-_sensei_ gives you drugs," Eileen said, hugging a pillow to her chest sullenly.

"Those are my medications," Tsubaki corrected.

"My mother takes medications, too, and my father yells at her for it," Eileen retorted, sulking against the couch. Drugs meant yelling and slapping and hiding under your bed, things that Tsubaki didn't belong with.

"My medications are good for my heart!" Tsubaki insisted, flushing and teary.

They parted on angry terms and Eileen reported the story to her mother. Eyes scattershot, her mother had told Eileen the truth of what she was feeling. The next day Eileen left a French Marigold on Tsubaki's windowsill, and then apologized while scuffing her foot against the ground and not exactly looking the girl in the eyes. Tsubaki accepted the apology and didn't bother to ask what the plant meant; now begging Eileen to teach her to play this funny-sounding game called poker.

In one year's time Tsubaki's father had worked out a deal with Eileen's—"give me the girl and I'll pay you whatever you want." Eyes gleaming at the thought of money, Eileen's father gave his daughter a bouquet of Buttercups and told her to put it on her mother's grave, "So I can finally show her". Buttercups meant "riches" and Eileen told her mother at the cemetery that he could keep his riches, because Eileen had her Camille-_dono_. She threw the flowers in the trash and went back to the flower stall, stealing a bouquet and bringing it to the Queen Camellia.

"Thirteen yellow Roses," she said proudly when she handed the bouquet to Tsubaki. "That means "friends forever"."

Eileen settled into life in the Queen Camellia. The ship still seemed foreign to her—Tsubaki had to guide her everywhere—but it was comfortable and she found her way around.

Tsubaki's father informed them that Tsubaki would be having an operation on the ship after it pulled into port, but the girls could have a day of fun in Tsubaki's hometown of Hakata before the procedure. Knowing that Eileen had missed the colors and scents of her flower stall, Tsubaki took her to a florist shop with the pocket money her father had given them.

"Here, you should have this," Eileen said, pointing to a faint purple Azalea. She paid for it and immediately handed it over to Tsubaki. "This means "Take care of yourself for me"."

Tsubaki, feeling it only right that she return the favor, picked up a leaflet describing the symbolism of flowers, and Eileen was rewarded with nine red-and-white-striped Roses.

"The nine means "together forever"," Tsubaki informed her, "and the stripes mean "Unity", so that just backs it up, doesn't it?"

They raced each other back to the ship; Eileen won.

"Eileen-_san_, I wonder if you could accompany me?" Tsubaki's father asked of her the next day, pulling her over.

"Is Camille-_dono_ okay?" Eileen asked worriedly.

"They're starting the operation soon. I think it would help her greatly if you were there. Will you come with me?"

"Of course! _Anything_ for Camille-_dono_."

In one month's time Tsubaki was crying in her doctor's office. _"Tsubaki-hime, I'll tell you where your heart came from if your promise not to tell your father."_

In two months' time Tsubaki was back in the florist shop, with the leaflet.

"Crimson Rose—Mourning."

"Red Carnation—Heartache."

"Calendula—Grief."

"Rosemary—Remembrance."

She took these four back to her room on the Queen Camellia, put them in the vase that had once housed her white Lily, and then went out to the party that was being held for her successful transplant. As she came down the stairs, her doctor handed her a bouquet of Narcissus, smiling at her. When she returned to her room, she discovered that they meant "Stay as sweet as you are."

The next morning, the Narcissus she had placed on her desk had disappeared, and in its stead laid a Tuberose—"Dangerous pleasure"—and an Oleander—"Beware".

"Eileen?" she called, and felt a tug at her newly installed heart. "Eileen?" she called again, and felt tears well up in her eyes. "Doctor!" she finally shrieked, and something within her disappeared.

When the flowers died she tried to pluck off the leaves and put them in her book, but she found to her horror that it had been left ashore in Hakata.

In three days' time she still wasn't finished crying about it.

In three years' time Tsubaki was becoming a young lady. Not to mention, three years brought about an ever-stronger admiration for her doctor.

The ship had returned to Hakata many times, but Tsubaki could never find the will to go and get that book of pressed flowers and their faded scent, not when she thought about Muraki-_sensei_.

On her thirteenth birthday she found, lying neatly on her desk, a purple Lilac. Sitting primly next to it was a bright yellow Jonquil.

Eagerly she searched out her dog-eared and age-worn leaflet. The flowers read "first love" and then "desire for returned affection."

"Father, did Muraki-_sensei_ give me these flowers?"

Tetsuya looked up from his desk to look at his red-faced, breathless daughter. "Camille, Muraki-_sensei_ is in Kanagawa Prefecture for the next several months, remember?"

"Oh," Tsubaki said. "But then…who sent these?"

"An admirer?" Her father smiled coyly.

"You don't let me have those, Father," Tsubaki reminded him. She took her flowers back to her room. The bright orange center of her Jonquil beckoned her, standing up pursed like lips. She couldn't help it—she placed her mouth upon the stuck-up petals.

Something in her heart ached beautifully and she thought to herself she had just had her real first kiss.

For her fourteenth birthday, she found a cut branch of pink Honeysuckle sitting on her desk. "Devoted affection."

For her fifteenth birthday, she found a pot of dark pink Amaranth sitting on her desk. "Unfading love."

The flowers continued to both elate and confuse Tsubaki. For her last two birthdays, Muraki-_sensei_ had been conveniently absent from the boat. Also, the day prior, she was a victim of amnesia, and she woke up to find her wallet slightly emptier. She visited all the flower stalls in the general vicinity, asking if she had been there the day before.

Each and every one of them insisted that a girl her age, but with long hair and a hidden face, was the one to make the purchase. But Tsubaki knew no girls with long hair—she barely knew any girls at all.

Her admirer was apparently waiting for her to catch a clue, too, as her sixteenth birthday yielded a bright pink Peach Blossom. "I am your captive."

Unfortunately, Tsubaki's deductive skills had always been lacking.

On her seventeenth birthday, her desk sported her namesake—a bright red Camellia. Tsubaki had known since discovering the flower existed that, when given romantically, it meant "You are the flame of my heart."

There was a very sharp tug in her chest that left her breathless.

Lying next to it was another Oleander. Looking at it struck a spark of fear in her stomach. Something made her reach for the aged leaflet. In her mind were the flower Eileen had given her seven years ago.

"French Marigold—Jealousy."

Suddenly not quite in control of her muscles, Tsubaki picked up the Camellia and stuck a pin through it, and attached it to the bodice of her dress, directly over her heart. The blood-pumping organ grew very warm, and then suddenly extremely hot. She had to sit down, her hand clutched to her chest, as her lungs tried to expand and call for help and failed.

In two weeks' time she was lying almost completely underwater, consciousness very slowly receding from her as pain very quickly doubled.

Hisoka and Muraki-_sensei_ were both incredibly lousy shots.

Though it might have been what she deserved.

She felt a lovely ache in her chest, and then lightness. Through her blurry vision she could see a girl with long hair looking down on her and offering a hand. Without moving at all, she took the girl's hand and rose. She could see through both herself and her companion, only faint pigmentation revealing they were there at all.

"I'm sorry you had to give me that French Marigold."

Eileen regarded her silently, before handing her a pink Larkspur.

"Ardent attachment," Tsubaki said automatically. "That's true."

Eileen smiled, and handed her a white Rose.

"No, Eileen," Tsubaki said, and Eileen looked startled. "I'm not anyone you need to be "worthy" for."

Not knowing when it had ever entered her own hand, she gave a yellow Tulip to her childhood playmate.

"Your name means "light", doesn't it?" Eileen nodded. "Well, "sunshine in your smile" was the closest I could find."

Eileen smiled. Light filled Tsubaki's eyes.

Eileen held up a Tarot card. The Lovers. She reached out a hand and touched Tsubaki's heart.

"My soulmate."

Eileen nodded, and held up another card. The World.

"It's over."

Eileen nodded again. "Did you miss me?"

"More than even _I'll_ ever know."

They lay down beside each other, eyes closed, their wrists wrapped up in white Periwinkle—the pleasures of memory.

Pure light washed over them, and they were gone.

The executors of the Kakyoin estate were surprised to find a diary with pressed flowers in it after the deaths of Tetsuya and Tsubaki.

They were even more suprised to find every petal thriving.


End file.
